Author Income Streams, 3 of 15: Ebook Sales

Photo by Tyler Franta on Unsplash.

For self-published and other indie authors who may not receive royalty checks, I break out ebook sales as a separate source of income from print book sales. Ebook sales are also an income stream for traditionally published authors who may sell digital products of their own on their own, independent of any traditional publishing arrangements.

Where can you sell ebooks?

Here’s a starting checklist: Your own website, Amazon, Apple Books, Blurb, Bn.com, Book Baby, BookBeat, ebooks2go, Feiyr, Fiverr, Google Play, Gumroad, Kobo, Lulu, Mackin, Scribd, Smashwords, Streetlib. There are dozens of other online locations dedicated to specifically selling digital content. You don’t have to be on all of them. I’d suggest publishing/listing your books on the largest ones (Amazon, Apple Books, Bn.com, Google Play) and a couple of the smaller ones, and monitoring the results. It may become clear to you after several months and after active book marketing which you should keep in play for future titles and which can be dropped. For many authors, however, being as many places as possible is a good strategy even when those sites only generate a trickle of sales. If there are no costs other than your labor to post your books on different sites (there will always be costs when books are sold), the potential exposure to new readers can be considered…